They get yelled at, honked at and flipped off.

People in the Mapleton/Marietta section of Mt. Lebanon have thousands of commuters cutting through their neighborhood each weekday. Traffic is often so heavy that some drivers don't want to wait for people to make a simple right turn into their driveways. There's been more than one outburst as an impatient commuter tries to rush someone.

So a group of about 40 people attended a neighborhood meeting last month in hopes of finding a way of keeping their neighborhood accessible to them, while discouraging, or even preventing, cut-through traffic.

	Ed Yozwick, Post-Gazette Click photo for larger image.

The tactic is called traffic calming, and it seeks to decrease speed or volume of traffic using barriers, turn restrictions and other devices to keep the peace.

Problem is, one person's answer can be another person's nightmare if it means the fire department can't get to a house or someone needs an extra 15 minutes to circumvent a maze-like neighborhood to get home.

But unlike last year's traffic calming meetings for Mission Hills, these neighbors, while they often disagreed on the exact method, stayed relatively calm and civil with each other, and questioned Mt. Lebanon traffic engineer Mark Magalotti and Commissioner Keith Mulvihill instead of skewering them.

"It's human nature to be self-centered," Diane Mittereder, of Mapleton Avenue, told her neighbors after an hour of debate. "But we have to look at the big picture."

In the end, people agreed to try a complicated approach involving turn restrictions and closed streets.

The traffic board was to have discussed the plan last night. From there, it would move to the commission, which has the final say.

Neighbors agreed that Old Orchard Road would be closed where it meets Cedar Boulevard. Mapleton Avenue also would be closed at its intersection with Cedar.

Turn restrictions would look like this: from Bower Hill Road, heading west, motorists would not be able to make a left turn onto Mapleton Avenue. Nor would drivers be able to make a right onto Bower Hill Road from Mapleton Avenue. Motorists heading south on Marlin Drive would not be able to make a right onto Rae Avenue. Nor would drivers be able to make a left turn from Rae Avenue onto Marlin Drive.

All of those restrictions would be in place 24 hours a day.

From 7 to 9 a.m., during morning rush, motorists travelling east on Navato Place and Landsdale Place would be prohibited from turning left onto Marietta Place. Drivers also would not be able to make a right turn from Marietta Place onto Bower Hill Road.

From 4 to 6 p.m., during evening rush, motorists traveling west on Bower Hill Road would not be able to make a left on to Marietta Place.

All of the traffic restrictions would be handled with signs rather than physical barriers.

Mr. Magalotti said the key to the plan was to have three lights on Cochran Road, at the intersections with Bower Hill Road, Altoona Place and Cedar Boulevard, retimed because Cochran Road and Bower Hill Road are likely to receive the extra traffic which now would be unable to cut through the neighborhood. Waits at those lights already are long. Turning lanes also might be extended and a left-turn arrow would probably be placed for traffic heading east on Cedar Boulevard and wishing to take a left onto Cochran Road.

Retiming the lights would cost about $25,000 and would have to go through an approval process with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, which oversees signal timing on its streets.

The matter began a year and a half ago with a petition. In accordance with Mt. Lebanon's traffic calming policy, a majority of people have to be in favor of some sort of relief. It was followed by a detailed study by Trans Associates, the municipal traffic engineering firm, which showed during weekdays, portions of the neighborhoods had an average of as many as 3,600 cars cutting through.

Mr. Mulvihill had asked people to try to find a consensus on a solution because only then would he be able to enroll the other four commissioners in adopting a plan. Ms. Mittereder said she didn't care which plan the town tried as long as it tried something.

"I'm willing to try anything to see how it will affect me," she said. "If I'm going to be inconvenienced five minutes every time I pull out of the driveway, that's OK with me."

Others agreed that something had to be done.

"I live at a stop sign and I can't pull out of my driveway," said Lisa Brown, who lives on Mapleton Avenue at Altoona Place.

Some ideas were eliminated, such as making all the streets one way or putting up traffic diverters to physically force drivers to turn. That method would be a problem for emergency vehicles.

Thomas Dempsey Jr., who lives on Academy Avenue, was not in favor of the street closure portion of the proposed solution.

"I don't want the fire department hindered in any way in getting to my house," he said, noting he preferred to try the turn restrictions with the signs first to see if that would be enough to curb the problem.

Mr. Magalotti said that, while some people ignore signs, about 92 percent of drivers would obey.

Any solution would be put in place temporarily and re-evaluated in two to three months, Mr. Magalotti said. That lag time is necessary to see what alternate routes drivers take and make sure it has no negative impact on surrounding neighborhoods.